I was very precocious when I was young. I went to college at 16, and I graduated at 20. I wanted to be a writer, but I was more interested in experience than in applying myself intellectually.

Motorcycles aren't about gaining agency, I don't think.

There was lots of pleasure in writing The Flamethrowers. Then again, what is pleasure? Some pleasure is easy and other kinds are never quite felt, existing only as the residue of hard work, or more as satisfaction than thrill.

People are complicated. Personally I don't go in for puritanical people.

I’d been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That’s what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn’t say much, I listened.

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.

I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.